Name: Batter Pudding with Strawberry Sauce
Ingredients: 1½ cups all-purpose flour; ¼ teaspoon salt; 2 teaspoons baking powder; 4 eggs; 1 pint milk; 1 cup powdered sugar; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 egg yolk; 1 cup fresh strawberries

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Batter Pudding with Strawberry Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder.
Add the beaten egg yolks and milk to the dry ingredients.
Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites gently.

Bake and make the sauce

Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake until golden.
For the sauce, mix the powdered sugar, butter, egg yolk, and fresh strawberries, then beat well and serve ice cold over the hot pudding.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Egg whites, beaten stiff and folded in, give the pudding its light, airy structure.
All-purpose flour: Provides the starch and gluten that set the batter into a firm, sliceable crumb.
Baking powder: Releases gas when heated, helping the pudding rise and become lighter.
Milk: Adds moisture and richness to the batter and helps it bake through tender.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture in the sauce.
Powdered sugar: Sweetens the sauce and dissolves smoothly into the butter and strawberries.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Stiffly beaten whites hold air that makes the pudding rise. Stirring them vigorously knocks that air out, leaving a denser, flatter result.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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Batter Pudding with Strawberry Sauce